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June 5th, 2008, 12:37 PM
An article on why it is the anti-EU people who are the best at recognising European countries' different traditions and customs...
Bullfighting in Brussels
by Daniel Hannan (British Tory Member of the European Parliament)
5th Jun 2008
Telegraph
The great Sachin Tendulkar in action for India. Whilst cricket is immensely popular in Britain (England&Wales), India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and other Anglosphere countries, within the European mainland it's a different story.
European integration may be a political process, but it is evidently not a cultural one.
Imagine that some British MEPs organised a celebration of cricket in Brussels, and managed to get some of the game's greats such as Sachin Tendulkar, Ian Botham, Brian Lara and Shane Warne to share a platform.
There would be much excitement in England and the Anglosphere; but most Continental MEPs would be left cold.
</IMG>
Toreodor superstar Enrique Ponce in action
This, mutatis mutandis, is what happened yesterday when a group of Spanish MEPs laid on an exhibition about bullfighting. The matadors who spoke — Victor Mendes of Portugal, César Rincón of Colombia, Enrique Ponce of Spain and Sébastien Castella of France — were every bit as stellar as the four putative cricketers, and every bit as unknown outside the Hispanic world as the cricketers would be outside the Commonwealth. Fame can be a remarkably national commodity. Just as you would struggle to explain to a Spaniard what was special about Shane Warne’s 708 wickets, so few Northern Europeans would have the slightest sense of how awesome was César Rincón’s achievement in opening the Puerta Grande in four successive appearances in Las Ventas.
As Enrique Ponce, arguably the most technically skilled torero ever to have lived, put it yesterday, much of the problem comes down to a mistranslation. Except in French and Portuguese, corrida de toros is rendered as bullfight, rather than the literal “bull-running”. This serves to convince non-Spaniards that the spectacle is a contest, and a one-sided one at that. Thinking that they are watching a fight, they become indignant at the seeming unfairness.
A Spaniard would be utterly bewildered at the notion that the corrida was struggle between matador and bull. When he uses the word fight (lucha) in the context of the bulls, he is being derogatory: he means that the torero has lost all control of the animal and is battling to stay alive. The Spaniard is watching, not a contest, but a ritualised dance: a relationship so tender and tragic that it might almost be called love. “Each man kills the thing he loves”, wrote Oscar Wilde. “The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword”. For the aficionado, the death of the bull, when properly carried out by a man worthy of the task, is a spiritual moment: the catharsis at the end of the tragedy. Plainly, though, this isn’t how most foreigners see things. Not sensing the tragedy, they see only the gore and are revolted.
The lack of mutual understanding was on display in the European Parliament yesterday, where abolitionists had organised a counter-demonstration. The bullfight, they contended, was a form of torture that degraded its spectators. Aficionados, who see the bull as an object of awe, even of veneration, were left not so much insulted as uncomprehending. Federico García Lorca once wrote: “Toreo is the liturgy of the bulls, an authentic religious drama in which, just as in the Mass, there is adoration and sacrifice of a god”. Yet here were participants in that rite being told that they were sadists and barbarians.
Still, abolitionist MEPs, most of whom are Euro-federalists, are at least being consistent.
Their support for European integration has never been based on respect for different cultures. Quite the contrary, they want the whole continent to be run by people like them: sensible technocrats with orthodox Left-liberal views. That’s why they’re so keen on harmonisation. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the best Europeans, the ones who genuinely admire the diversity that has always been the basis of European civilisation, the ones who most relish visiting other countries and savouring different traditions, are the Euro-sceptics.
telegraph.co.uk
An article on why it is the anti-EU people who are the best at recognising European countries' different traditions and customs...
Bullfighting in Brussels
by Daniel Hannan (British Tory Member of the European Parliament)
5th Jun 2008
Telegraph
The great Sachin Tendulkar in action for India. Whilst cricket is immensely popular in Britain (England&Wales), India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and other Anglosphere countries, within the European mainland it's a different story.
European integration may be a political process, but it is evidently not a cultural one.
Imagine that some British MEPs organised a celebration of cricket in Brussels, and managed to get some of the game's greats such as Sachin Tendulkar, Ian Botham, Brian Lara and Shane Warne to share a platform.
There would be much excitement in England and the Anglosphere; but most Continental MEPs would be left cold.
</IMG>Toreodor superstar Enrique Ponce in action
This, mutatis mutandis, is what happened yesterday when a group of Spanish MEPs laid on an exhibition about bullfighting. The matadors who spoke — Victor Mendes of Portugal, César Rincón of Colombia, Enrique Ponce of Spain and Sébastien Castella of France — were every bit as stellar as the four putative cricketers, and every bit as unknown outside the Hispanic world as the cricketers would be outside the Commonwealth. Fame can be a remarkably national commodity. Just as you would struggle to explain to a Spaniard what was special about Shane Warne’s 708 wickets, so few Northern Europeans would have the slightest sense of how awesome was César Rincón’s achievement in opening the Puerta Grande in four successive appearances in Las Ventas.
As Enrique Ponce, arguably the most technically skilled torero ever to have lived, put it yesterday, much of the problem comes down to a mistranslation. Except in French and Portuguese, corrida de toros is rendered as bullfight, rather than the literal “bull-running”. This serves to convince non-Spaniards that the spectacle is a contest, and a one-sided one at that. Thinking that they are watching a fight, they become indignant at the seeming unfairness.
A Spaniard would be utterly bewildered at the notion that the corrida was struggle between matador and bull. When he uses the word fight (lucha) in the context of the bulls, he is being derogatory: he means that the torero has lost all control of the animal and is battling to stay alive. The Spaniard is watching, not a contest, but a ritualised dance: a relationship so tender and tragic that it might almost be called love. “Each man kills the thing he loves”, wrote Oscar Wilde. “The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword”. For the aficionado, the death of the bull, when properly carried out by a man worthy of the task, is a spiritual moment: the catharsis at the end of the tragedy. Plainly, though, this isn’t how most foreigners see things. Not sensing the tragedy, they see only the gore and are revolted.
The lack of mutual understanding was on display in the European Parliament yesterday, where abolitionists had organised a counter-demonstration. The bullfight, they contended, was a form of torture that degraded its spectators. Aficionados, who see the bull as an object of awe, even of veneration, were left not so much insulted as uncomprehending. Federico García Lorca once wrote: “Toreo is the liturgy of the bulls, an authentic religious drama in which, just as in the Mass, there is adoration and sacrifice of a god”. Yet here were participants in that rite being told that they were sadists and barbarians.
Still, abolitionist MEPs, most of whom are Euro-federalists, are at least being consistent.
Their support for European integration has never been based on respect for different cultures. Quite the contrary, they want the whole continent to be run by people like them: sensible technocrats with orthodox Left-liberal views. That’s why they’re so keen on harmonisation. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the best Europeans, the ones who genuinely admire the diversity that has always been the basis of European civilisation, the ones who most relish visiting other countries and savouring different traditions, are the Euro-sceptics.
telegraph.co.uk
